Muralist and chanteuse Nicole Atkins is on a lot of people's lips as the next almost big thing. Her new album, The Party's Over, is a jangly, carnival-esque ride into the burnt out ends of a long night. As your guide through the couple hours before dawn, Nicole's voice is at once soulful, stripped and smoked.

Atkins is more accomplished as a songwriter than she needs to be. She and producer David Muller add lush harmony after lush harmony to each track and pay rapt attention to every la da deeing. The descending line of the piano in "Delora" coupled with what can only be called Martian sounds is a great marriage of old and new influences. "Neptune City," an indirect ode to her hometown of Neptune, NJ, is a final and triumphant closing track.

After the party is over, there will be unfair comparisons to Chrissie Hynde. However, the sway and note choices of Jeff Buckley would probably be a more accurate description. No comparisons would make any sense trying to explain the post apocalyptic joyride the CD explores. Best to just let Atkins guide you through it.

I meet up with Nicole Atkins at the 10th Street Pub. It is a Tuesday night, and she is on her way to work the door for her roommate's party at the Delancey, but she calls and tells them she will be late so she can finish her wine and her talk with me about today's music and being in love with nostalgia.

Nicole Atkins has a dream in which she has won a 20 pound bag of pork chops in a game of bingo. In this world, the news is done in cartoon, and she watches a story about farm animals being imprisoned because they don't want to work. A goat is being interviewed who says, "Please just eat us, we're lazy, we don't want to work." She starts cooking up the pork chops thinking, "it's ok, they're cool with it."

It makes sense that a girl who wrote the transcendent lullaby of "The Party's Over" would have such a vivid night mind. She grew up in Neptune, NJ, right across the street from Shark River. Many times, she ran from her car to the house, worried that ghosts would appear to her from the river.

"The Party's Over" and her stories is peopled with these ghosts, and with an uncle who sings great karaoke, Old Grandad, and a childhood of Catholic schools, being raised in a family that told her God owed them. Nicole Atkins is frighteningly real, one foot in reality, and one in a world she should be too young to know.

You are a muralist by trade. What role if any does color play in your music?
A lot of my lyrics are about color, I guess coming from an art training in college it's a big part of my vocabulary. I went to school for illustration and painting at the UNC Charlotte.

She being gone seems to be a thru-line in Party's Over. Who or What is "she?"
I guess it's a mix. The first song I wrote on there was "Drifter" and it was originally called "Aisha's divorce." My friend Aisha was going through a separation and then divorce so I wrote that song about her, The rest of the songs started about being me, I tend to move every three or four months, I don't really like staying in one place for too long, And then with "Delora" I realized how melodramatic I was being about everything so I tried to make it as melodramatic as I could. Psychedelic freak out soap opera daytime soap type thing…
We didn't plan on doing a record. We just did that song and it worked out really well and then all that shit happened and I came back and it inspired a lot of my writing and my willingness to get things done.

One writer said of you: "Atkins' music inhabits a world where poodle skirts and Pabst Blue Ribbon go hand in hand." What does that mean to you?
It means I should send the guy who wrote that a fruit basket. It's weird, because I don't even try to, maybe that's why I move a lot, I can't keep a job very well, cause it's almost like this little dream world. I'm in love with nostalgia. It goes so beyond my growing up. The things that I like, the things that I feel more connected with are from when like my parents were growing up. I feel more connected with singers and things from my parent's era and their parent's era than I do in my present state.

Where does that come from?
I have no idea. It's weird. I wish I could explain it. Ever since I was little…I have this one grandmother on my dad's side, she was like this ghost from the 20's or something, this was in the 80's and she had this really weird way of dressing and she would wrap up oranges in tin foil and that was like my birthday present. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. When I was little, when I had money to buy my first tape-

What was that, by the way?
It was supposed to be Hall and Oates, or New Kids on the Block. It ended up being Traffic: "John Barleycorn Must Die" and Cream: "Wheels of Fire," because my uncle was like, "You can't get that, you have to get this," and I thought he was really cool cause he let me watch wrestling all the time so I listened to whatever he said.

Do you write toward a certain mood?
No, a melody comes and I put guitar to it and I say all these fake words that make no sense, like (says a series of words that make no sense) and then words will come and then they will just turn into something, they turn into what they're supposed to be. I feel like with the record "Party's Over" there's a continuous thread of hopeful melancholy. It's a big story.
It didn't start out being a concept album. After the 7th song, it was like" Whoa, these are going in story order." I wrote "Delora" as a bookend to "Drifter." I love records you can listen to like a whole thing, like Pink Floyd or even like a Jayhawks record.

More and more, like Wilco.
Yes! Every Wilco record, especially Summerteeth, is the soundtrack for that period of my life when those records come out, and I'm really hoping they come out with a really insanely hopeful happy one.

Have you noticed women musicians treat you any differently than male musicians?
It depends on which woman, I have a lot of really close musician friends that are women. I haven't really been treated badly by any musicians. Except for my first gig when I was 17, I opened up for this woman, who 30 something indie rock boys loved, I played in this acoustic band with my friend Alison and we played Belly and Jayhawks covers and we brought everybody from the high school. They were all talking to her before her set and they made her go on first cause I brought more people and she kicked me out of the dressing room so she could put her makeup on. She was a bitch.
But, all in all not really. Except the girls don't really hit on me.

What were you like in high school?
I was a total weirdo, I guess. I was the girl who got invited to all the parties, but I was also the girl who always got made fun of. I went to Catholic School, I played guitar and had my little coffeehouse band with my friend Alison. They'd be like, "Oh, let's let Nicole play Jesus in the skit," and I'd be like "Oh cool, they think that I'm a good actress," and they'd be like, "She's got all the split ends." They were really fucked up. I actually failed morality and had to go to summer school. It was so lame.

What is the worst question to ask a musician?
Other than what do you sound like? What do you hope to do within the next five years? No matter what you answer you're going to end up sounding pretentious or way too hopeful. You may jinx yourself. You don't know what you're going to do in the next five years. I don't know what I'm going to do next week.

When did you get your first guitar and who bought it for you?
My mom had a little brother, my uncle Dom, who passed away when he was 13. He played guitar and when I was 13 I was in my attic putting away all my stuffed animals and I found the guitar, and I was like sweet, a guitar, and I was like, "Mom, a guitar" and she said, "Don't touch that." I would go in the attic and I had seen that Nirvana Unplugged where he did that Ledbelly song, and I sort of picked around by ear and taught myself how to play it, and my grandmother was babysitting me and I played it for her and she was like, wow, and she got me lessons. That was my first guitar, it was a learner's Yamaha.

If you could emulate anyone's career, whose would it be?
Probably Jeff Tweedy. He keeps puting out better and better and better records. He has a career and he also has a family and he's teaching his son to be a drummer. I want that, I want to be able to play music with people I like and just keep within the realm of experimenting.

Is anyone in your family involved in music?
No. They all like music, but no. My cousin Mike is a guitar player, we had a band in high school called the Barefoot Blues Band. My uncle is an amazing karaoke singer. He can do a dead on Frankie Valli impression. He and I will get drunk in his basement bar and he has a karaoke machine hooked up and we'll just drink Old Grandad and sing karaoke to Rascals songs.

Anyone not in music who inspires you?
Filmmakers, David Lynch. Sicilian people and the way they hold on to their guilt like a badge. My family is Sicilian. Ever since I was little I have had this awful fixation with my impending death. People would be like, "I want to meet your parents, they sound cool," and I'd be like "oh sure, you'll meet them" and I'm like " yeah, when I die, you'll meet them. At my funeral." It's awful. I look at old people and I get really jealous. I'm like, "fuck you, guys," I'm afraid I won't get to be like that.

Can you not see yourself old?
No, I can, but I just get afraid that I'm not going to. I guess my family is riddled with tragedy. People who died when they were really young.
When I younger in Catholic school, I was always like, "Why don't we go to church?" and it was always like, "Cause God owes us."

What do you think about 5 minutes before you fall asleep?
I think about how broke I am. All the stuff I need to do like quit smoking and work out and quit drinking. Sometimes, it'll be positive. I think about how much my air mattress sucks and how I need a real bed.